O Brother, Where Art Thou?
by illuminata79
Summary: A young doctor in training is still missing the brother she last saw when she was a child.
1. Chapter 1

It has been a very long time since Jess last saw her brother Mick, but every so often, she is reminded of just how much she adored him.

This song, while about missing a father and not a brother, seemed perfect to me to describe how she feels.

_**Bruce Springsteen - My Father's House**_

_Last night I dreamed that I was a child_  
_Out where the pines grow wild and tall_  
_I was trying to make it home through the forest_  
_Before the darkness falls_

_I heard the wind rustling through the trees _  
_And ghostly voices rose from the fields_  
_I ran with my heart pounding down that broken path_  
_With the devil snappin' at my heels_

_I broke through the trees and there in the night_  
_My father's house stood shining hard and bright _  
_The branches and brambles tore my clothes and scratched my arms_  
_But I ran till I fell shaking in his arms_

_I awoke and I imagined the hard things that pulled us apart_  
_Will never again, sir, tear us from each others hearts_  
_I got dressed and to that house I did ride _  
_From out on the road I could see its windows shining in light_

_I walked up the steps and stood on the porch _  
_A woman I didn't recognize came and spoke to me through a chained door_  
_I told her my story and who I'd come for_  
_She said "I'm sorry, son, but no one by that name lives here anymore"_

_My father's house shines hard and bright _  
_It stands like a beacon calling me in the night_  
_Calling and calling, so cold and alone_  
_Shining 'cross this dark highway where our sins lie unatoned_

* * *

_Chicago, 1953_

"Very well done, Stephanie. You've been very brave." Jess affectionately patted the blond girl on the head and began to wrap an elastic bandage around the bony knee she'd just finished stitching up. "Just promise me you won't go knocking down any more pedestrians with your bike, will you?"

She winked at her seven-year-old patient who managed a smile and asked a little timidly, "Will I have a big scar now?"

"Well, I can't promise it will all heal without a trace …", Jess began hesitantly. "The cut on your knee is quite deep, and the stitches in your brow …"

"Great!" was Stephanie's surprising answer. "Greg, that's my brother, he's always bragging about his scars and how he got them. Now I've got one, too, and I even got to ride in an ambulance. He'll be ever so jealous!" She grinned, looking quite smug.

Stephanie's mother shook her head in exasperation and rolled her eyes.

"Kids!" she said, adding in a lower voice, "To be honest, Stephanie is almost worse than Greg when it comes to doing stupid things. It's just that she's _usually_ luckier getting away without injuries."

"You know, Greg is terrible", Stephanie told Jess in a loud stage whisper. "He's always so nasty to me. Once, he put a living _toad_ into my bed, can you imagine that?"

Jess gave an appropriate "Ewww", trying hard not to laugh, and Stephanie continued, "Do you have a brother? Is he nasty, too?"

Jess quickly shook her head and was grateful when Priscilla knocked on the door with an urgent question, giving her an excuse to see Stephanie and her mother off quite curtly.

Still she felt this sickening little pang that always stabbed her when she thought of the brother she had loved so much.

Mick had never been nasty. He had been the most wonderful brother she could have wished for until it all fell apart and he disappeared from her life without a word of goodbye.

She had never forgotten him, but she had taught herself not to think too much about him.

She tried not to think too much about him now and focused on the next young patient who was waiting for her, tearful and trembling in his mother's lap, to have his bleeding lip looked after.

Then came the next kid, and the next, and yet another, and Jess was surprised when she heard a knock on the door that was subsequently being flung half open, while Priscilla sternly declared from behind her reception desk, "Wait a minute, young man. Dr. Cleaver is still seeing a patient!"

She allowed herself a quick stealthy smile as she scribbled a prescription. Oliver and his boisterous streak never ceased to exasperate Priscilla, or at least she pretended it did. Jess knew the seasoned nurse had a soft spot for Oliver, that handsome, good-naturedly mischievous cardiology resident, but certainly knew to hide it well.

Sometimes Jess herself couldn't quite believe that she and one of the most gorgeous guys of all the hospital staff had been an item for well over three years and were planning to get married next summer.

She thought herself quite okay but anything but a bombshell. She'd probably still look more like a girl than a woman by the time she was forty, with no breasts to speak of and long thin limbs, a pale oval face and fine brown hair that didn't have the slightest inclination to curl no matter what she did to it, and she knew there were a few young nurses rather jealous that Oliver Corelli should have picked such a plain Jane for his girlfriend.

But one of the things that had most attracted Jess to Oliver apart from his looks and his brains and his wicked sense of humour had been his remarkably underdeveloped vanity.

Jess said goodbye to her last patient and walked from the room with a big smile on her face.

She was looking forward to a nice weekend with Oliver. For once, wondrously, neither of them would be on duty, not even on call, so they planned to spend all the time until Sunday evening doing nothing but whatever it was they would feel like doing.

Oliver rose from the chair he had occupied in the deserted waiting area and kissed her on the cheek. "What do you think, dinner at Maddie's tonight and the cinema afterwards?"

"Absolutely!" Jess relished the idea of beginning their weekend at their favourite steakhouse, kicking back over a fine rib-eye and fries and perhaps a beer to wash it all down, and a good movie instead of dessert. "But I guess I'll have to grab a quick shower first, though. I'm feeling all hot and grubby."

"Whatever you need, my lady." He winked and, apparently remembering something, got out his wallet to check its contents. "I'll need to stop by at home, too, and stock up on cash. Five dollars won't get us very far, I fear."

"Oh, I can pay for my own dinner, you know", Jess replied, laughing.

"I know." Oliver gave her another kiss. "But I won't let you."

* * *

Forty minutes later, she gave herself one last critical once-over in the hall mirror and pulled on a short fitted jacket over the blue polka-dot dress she was wearing, one of Oliver's favourites.

She picked up her purse when the doorbell rang and thought about which film to choose as she clattered down the stairs in the white heels that matched the dots on her dress.

She still hadn't seen _Roman Holiday _despite her long-standing crush on Gregory Peck, and Oliver had promised to go see it with her, but now he was so excited about _The Robe_ which had been released just a week ago that she wasn't sure she could persuade him to trade biblical epic for romantic comedy.

Well, Richard Burton wouldn't be bad to look at either even if she did get bored with all those Romans and Galileans, she decided. Nothing was going to spoil this evening, not even centurions and crucifixions.

And a beautiful evening it was, with a good long chat and lots of laughter over a simple but tasty dinner. Jess loved how they never ran out of things to talk about – serious things, emotional things, and utterly silly things, too.

After dinner, Oliver graciously let Jess pick the movie, and she thoroughly enjoyed watching Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn's romance unfold before the gorgeous backdrop of Rome.

She found herself dreaming of a similar holiday with her beloved as they walked from the theatre into the night that was still surprisingly warm. If they didn't splurge too much on the wedding, they might be able to afford a honeymoon in Europe …

She smiled to herself, and Oliver nudged her affectionately. "So, did you have fun drooling over your Californian dreamboat?"

"Aw, come on, you have to admit it was a lovely movie. And didn't you think it was a lovely leading lady?" she added slyly.

"Lovely leading _man_ was what you really wanted to say, wasn't it? Well, I'm ready to concede he did an okay job, but even you have to admit that this man has ridiculously long legs. How can a man's legs be so disproportionately long?"

Jess shook her head and, knowing that Oliver just couldn't resist ribbing her about her girlish adoration of Gregory Peck and would get all the more exhilarated the more staunchly she defended her movie-screen hero, only laughed and made no comment other than "You're simply impossible, Oliver."

"And that's exactly why you love me, isn't it?" He grabbed her round the waist, pulled her close and kissed her on the forehead.

They decided to walk the short distance home, with the night so balmy and taxis quite expensive, and when they turned into the street where Oliver lived, just around the corner from Jess, he asked, "You coming upstairs with me? Patrick's always out with Charlene on Fridays, so we'll have the place to ourselves …"

"Sounds tempting", Jess said longingly, but hesitated, not daring to believe her luck.

With Oliver sharing a tiny house with his best friend back from elementary school and herself lodging with an elderly couple who explicitly ruled out male visitors, considering it their foremost duty to watch over their young tenant's modesty, opportunities to indulge in a certain kind of physical closeness were rare and coveted.

"But … are you sure he won't be back soon?" she asked cautiously.

"He's never back before midnight. One, two o'clock, more like. Don't you worry, the coast will be clear."

Oliver gallantly offered her his arm and ceremoniously escorted her up the three steps that led up to the front door, but had to let go of her to search the pockets of his sports coat for his keys.

Jess was relieved when they found the hallway dark and deserted and the house all quiet, and she gave a throaty little laugh in anticipation of pleasures to come.

Oliver flicked the switch of the small lamp on the hallway table and made a big show of taking her jacket off her before he reached for her hand and eagerly led her towards the narrow stairs, whispering into her ear in a raspy voice that made her body tingle from head to toe.

They were halfway up the stairs when there was a shattering noise in one of the downstairs rooms.

Jess's dreamy smile died on her lips, and Oliver frowned and murmured something rude that sounded very much like "what the fuck".

There was another sound, something scraping across a tiled floor, followed by a loud bang.

Oliver swore, and Jess dryly remarked, "Looks like we're not actually alone."

Oliver looked around for a weapon, just in case, but dropped the large umbrella he had seized back into its stand when muffled curses and more scraping and tinkling became audible. He strode over to one of the doors and tore it open.

"What the heck are _you_ doing here on a Friday night?"

Jess could see a figure cowering on the kitchen floor, busy cleaning up some debris, all but hidden from view behind the table. The red hair spoke for itself, though – Patrick obviously was home after all, and in quite a state, too.

Oliver took the brush and dustpan off his friend, who was mumbling inconsistently all the time, and quickly swept up the shards of what seemed to have been a beer bottle, then picked up the overturned chair and made Patrick sit down.

Jess ventured closer, hovering insecurely in the doorway. Even from this distance, Patrick was looking dreadful – ashen-faced and dead-eyed, not a bit his usual confident self.

Normally, he was an attractive redhead, not handsome in any classical sense but striking with his intelligent eyes of the clearest, palest mountain-stream blue and a full, expressive mouth framed by two long vertical creases that deepened when he laughed. His tour of duty in the Pacific had left him with a very slight limp that somehow added to his extraordinary charm.

What the crumpled heap in the kitchen chair exuded now was not charm but a dangerous mix of misery and anger, simmering right beneath the surface. It would take but the tiniest spark to make him explode.

From his drunken mutterings, Jess deducted that Charlene had walked out on him after they'd had a terrible row.

It was not the first time that his irascible girlfriend had left him in a huff only to wheedle her way back into his life and his heart not much later.

It had happened twice before, and Jess remembered the dire consequences very well.

The first time, Patrick, who was usually the kindest soul in the world, had raised hell in the local bar and ended up in the drunk tank with a split lip and a black eye.

The second time, he had guzzled half a bottle of cheap whiskey before he trashed vast parts of the living-room and then collapsed on the ripped-up sofa in a half comatose state.

She wondered what they were in for now and if they could do anything to prevent another disaster.

Oliver must have been thinking along the same lines, for he threw the broken glass into the trash, walked over to his friend who was still hanging his head by the kitchen table, patted him on the shoulder and said, "It's a goddamn shame about that stupid woman, but promise me one thing, will you? No shit this time, okay? We can sit with you for a while, and we can get drunk together if you think it helps, I'll even clean up after you if you start throwing up, but _please,_ no smashing up anything. Or anyone. Remember there are ladies present."

He pulled up a chair and sat down while Patrick looked around and stared at Jess bleary-eyed as if he had not noticed her before.

For a split second, she wasn't sure what he was going to do and instinctively prepared to flee in case he flipped his lid, but he only murmured in a drained voice, "Oh. Yeah. Jess. Hiya."

"Hiya, Patrick", she replied shyly and, when he didn't acknowledge her words at all, added, "Do you … do you want me to leave you and Oliver alone?"

From behind his friend, Oliver mouthed, "Stay", and finally, Patrick cocked his head and said mournfully, "It's okay, Jess. You're one of the good girls. Ollie's got no idea just what a lucky man he is to have a girl like you."

Jess was uncertain what to make of his weepy praises and increasingly miffed about the turn the lovely evening had taken, and she decided it was better not to make any comment.

Instead, she said, "Have you eaten, Patrick?"

"Eaten?" Patrick asked stupidly, as if he had never heard the word before, and after a considerable pause, he added, "Not since lunch. I'm not hungry. I just want a beer, or two or three or eight."

Jess shook her head and told him drinking on an empty stomach was a very bad idea, and not just from a medical standpoint.

She went on to rummage in the fridge, but all it held apart from a lot of beer was a couple of eggs, a chunk of butter and an unappealing bit of sausage. She snorted disdainfully, threw away the dried-up sausage, cracked the eggs into a pan and left them on the stovetop to fry while she continued searching the cupboards for more comestibles, finding nothing but half a loaf of bread and a bag of potato chips.

Sipping the beer Oliver had opened for him, Patrick watched her in silence as she tipped the fried eggs onto a plate, sprinkled them with salt and pepper, cut off a few slices of bread and put the steaming plate in front of him.

She hadn't expected any reaction, but he gave her a thankful, sheepish grin and began to tuck in with surprising appetite, and suddenly she wasn't all that angry any more.

She still would have preferred to spend the rest of the evening doing something very different from sitting at the kitchen table, trying to console Patrick, but she liked Oliver's impulsive friend well enough that she was ready to put on a good face for his sake if it helped to keep him from doing anything rash.

Once he had cleared his plate, Patrick started talking and just couldn't seem to stop.

First it was Charlene he talked about, pretty, seductive, pouty, bitchy Charlene.

While Oliver occasionally made compassionate noises, Jess sat back and kept her mouth shut, wondering why on earth an otherwise smart guy like Patrick allowed this bottle-blond floozy to treat him like dirt over and over again.

Finally, the topic was exhausted, and Patrick began reminiscing about his previous girlfriend and how he had met her at the wedding of an old army comrade.

This inevitably led to two of them eagerly swapping wartime anecdotes. Inseparable from first grade on, Patrick and Oliver had joined the army together and somehow even managed to get into the same training camp.

Jess suppressed a yawn and tried not to look too bored as she pretended to listen. What was it with boys and their war stories?

Hoping they wouldn't spend too much time talking shop about their tours of duty, she grabbed another fistful of chips and decided not to get up and go home just yet.

Maybe she'd be lucky and Patrick would nod off some time soon, so that there would be time enough to go upstairs with Oliver after all before she left.

_Oh no,_ she thought when Patrick, walking ostentatiously erect, went into the tiny living-room and produced a box of old photos from a drawer in order to prove some obscure point.

"See, _that's _him you mean, Ollie! Rogers, his name was. Not Macauley. Macauley was that fat little sergeant in charge of marksmanship training. Wait, I've got one of him, too, I think …" He searched the box, dumping little stacks of photos on the table left and right, until he triumphantly thrust a blurry snapshot into Oliver's face. "Here's good old Macauley for you. Remember him?"

"Ye-e-es." Oliver winced. "Only too well. Oh, what's this? Dear God, you and me and Bobby Heck and Julian … Julian …"

"Prendergast." Patrick's voice became soft as he added, "Poor sod."

Oliver handed the photo on to Jess, who cast a polite glance at a bunch of grinning young privates in training camp, posing with their hats on sideways, Oliver and Patrick framing two guys she didn't know.

"What happened to him?" she found herself asking, almost against her own volition. "Julian … Prendergast?"

"Got blasted off his feet the moment we landed in the Philippines. We had barely arrived when he got hit." Patrick swallowed hard.

"Damn, yeah. Remember Gordon Banks, Patrick? Gordon and his poisonous roll-ups?" Oliver chuckled for a moment and became serious again quickly. "We had only just deployed among those God-awful hedgerows in Normandy when he …" He couldn't continue speaking and shook his head silently.

Jess nervously toyed with the pack of photos she had picked up randomly, trying not to listen.

She didn't want to hear all that. She didn't want to imagine that her fiancé and his best friend had been out fighting a bloody war when they had hardly been out of their teens.

Flipping cursorily through the snapshots of boys in uniform, some dashing, some ridiculous in their army getup, she idly wondered why they delighted so much in talking about all those horrible memories.

Finally, the last picture. Patrick and some other young soldiers, this time in lightweight tropical gear, grouped around a senior man who seemed to be giving them directions, captured in a clear three-quarter profile as he looked over his shoulder and pointed at the person behind the camera.

She was about to put it aside when something about him caught her eye and she took a second, closer look.

She set the glass she had been about to put to her lips back down on the table with a clatter and felt her heartbeat quicken.

"Who's this?" she asked, pointing at the man in the foreground of the picture.

"Oh, that was a fabulous guy", Patrick said, gazing fondly at the photograph. "I didn't know him for long, but he was a great man. Like a big brother to us youngsters, especially poor Joe Kowalski and Richard Conway and me. He had only just joined up himself, but he was at least eight or nine years older than the rest of us, so we often called him Grandpa. I'm not sure what his actual name was, though. _Dammit_." He screwed up his face thoughtfully, narrowing his eyes to slits. "Mike … Mike something. No, wait, it wasn't Mike … Michael … Mick! Yes, Mick … can't recall his last name, though, I'm sorry. Carruthers, Carrington … something like that. All I remember is that he made corporal quickly. Lost track of him entirely after I'd been out with my broken ankle. When I came back eventually, I got assigned to a different unit and …"

"Carpenter", Jess whispered tonelessly.

Both men turned toward her."Huh?" Patrick mumbled.

"Did you say something, Jess?" Oliver asked.

"Carpenter", she repeated, louder.

Oliver frowned, flabbergasted, but Patrick exclaimed, "Yes, that's it!" He gave her a puzzled look and added, "How'd _you_ know his name?"

"He … he's my brother." Her voice failed, and she hugged her arms around her chest, suddenly shivering.

The men were struck silent, too, looking at each other uneasily before Patrick said, "I didn't know you had a brother."

Jess only nodded wordlessly, blinking back tears, before she explained, "I haven't seen him in a very long time. We got … separated when I was still a kid." She choked and felt a trail of wetness trickling down her cheek after all. Oliver passed her his hankie without saying anything.

When she felt she could trust her voice again, she asked, "Did you know him well, Patrick?" To her chagrin, it sounded thin, like a pleading child.

"Not all that well, but he was my squad leader until I wrecked my foot. He was one of the finest. Not exactly by the book, but he had good instincts, and he was frightfully fit. I think he'd been living somewhere in the Pacific area for a while, on one of those tiny islands, which was why he was much better suited to the climate than the rest of us were. He was pretty tall, a little over six feet, I think, and quite a handsome guy. We used to tease the sergeant, who was already quite bald at twenty-five, because Carpenter was so much older and still had that mop of curls. Needed to get a haircut every couple of weeks." He allowed himself a little smile at the memory. "And I remember he had somewhat funny eyes. It wasn't exactly a lazy eye but …"

A droopy eyelid, Jess thought.

She had almost forgotten about it, but now she could picture it clearly. Normally, it had been hardly visible, but it tended to show when he was tired or stressed. She wondered if it had become permanent as he grew older, or if maybe the immense strain of the war had made it show more pronouncedly.

"It's really a shame I lost touch with him", Patrick went on. "I only heard that he got hit some time after I'd been shipped off to hospital and that he didn't return to the company until the war ended, but I never actually got around to finding out more."

"Do you think he … ?" Jess's voice failed.

Patrick quickly assured her that it didn't have to mean the worst. "He probably came back at some point but got transferred to another unit, like I did. I never saw any of my comrades from Delta Company again until after the war, and there were a few of them who'd have sworn I was dead." His attempt at a grin faltered under Jess's worried look, and he hastened to add, "You know what, Jessie girl, I might be able to find out where he went off to. Or rather, Dad might. I'll speak to him if you want me to."

Jess's eyes widened. She knew that Patrick's father was some kind of bigwig in the army. Could it really be she would finally learn what had become of the brother she had adored so much?

She had never dared contact the Red Cross because she was too afraid of having her worst fears confirmed, but she couldn't possibly pass up this opportunity.

"If you'd do that for me …", she said shakily.

Patrick nodded and handed the photo back to her. "I will. Until then, you'll have to make do with this. Yeah, c'mon, girl, just take it."

Stammering her thanks, she carefully stowed it away in her purse, and she hardly spoke a word when Oliver escorted her home not much later, her mind racing.

Although she was bone tired, she found it hard to sleep. She just couldn't stop thinking.

She tried to imagine Mick as a soldier, Mick who had never engaged in any brawls if he could help it, and wondered what had led him to join the forces.

It wasn't the kind of thing she'd have thought her brother would do, but then, she had no idea what kind of man he had come to be. And besides, so many people had done so many untypical things during the war.

She herself, who had never had a great interest in medical things, had volunteered as a nurse's aide at a military hospital towards the end of the war because she felt she had to do something good in this world gone crazy, and it had pointed her towards a career entirely different from what everyone, including herself, would have expected.

Her brother might have felt a similar urge to do something worthwhile.

She wasn't sure if risking life and limb for your country was actually a good thing, though.

She had seen her fair share of horrible injuries during her time in Baltimore, and her head was involuntarily spinning with dreadful visions of all those maimed and crippled servicemen she had encountered there.

The thought of Mick's beautiful features brought terribly disfigured faces to her mind and raised unbidden questions in her mind.

His sharp vivid eyes, blinded? His elegant long limbs shattered, his determined stride, his graceful movements forever stopped by a bullet to the spine? The vigorous-looking stranger in the photograph incapacitated permanently by a shot through the lungs or intestines?

More and more cruel scenarios swam up from the gloomiest depths of her unconscious, and she couldn't shake those images too gruesome to talk about.

It was one thing to have found a trace of him after she had searched for him in vain and kept telling herself he might well be long dead, but not knowing what kind of life he led, whether he had recovered from whatever injury he'd suffered, whether he was well, or happy, left her restless anyway.

When the sun came up outside her window, she was still tossing and turning and wondering if Patrick would think to ask his father for help.

She told herself not to become overexcited just yet, even if the prospect was utterly compelling.

Chances were that Patrick had been way too drunk to remember his promise in the morning, and, in that case, it would be awkward to remind him.

But still …

She reached for the large photo on her dressing table, an old picture into whose frame she had tucked Patrick's snapshot before she dropped into bed.

She had snaffled it from among Mom's things when they had moved house and kept it on her nightstand in their new home, no matter how often Janie overturned it on purpose or how many poisonous looks Aunt Dorothy shot into its direction. Her father had never commented on its presence.

Until last night, it had been her only photo of her brother - fifteen-year-old Mick, perfectly beautiful with his big expressive eyes and sensitive face and longish curly hair, flanked by two little girls, one tall and thin and the other short and chubby, flashing a dazzling smile.

And suddenly she had this other photo to prove that the pretty boy had, inconceivably, turned into an impressive man with broad shoulders and a lean, masculine face, his tumble of curls replaced by a practical but unfashionable army haircut.

She did the math quickly – he must have been around thirty when this was taken. No wonder he had come a long way from the slim teenage boy she remembered.

But there couldn't be any doubt about who it was.

She knew that squint, and the set of his mouth, and the shape of his nose.

She would have recognized this face among a thousand others, even if it had been more than twenty years since she had last seen it in the flesh, on the platform of the station in what had been her hometown then, on a freezing day in January.

After that, there had been only letters.

And after a while, nothing at all.


	2. Chapter 2

_1932_

Jess held her breath as she tiptoed down the corridor, nervously twirling one of her braids around her forefinger, listening for any telltale sound, any sign that one of _them_ had come inside after her.

But the house was quiet except for the ticking of the big grandfather clock in the hallway.

They were all outside, gathered around the table on the back porch, celebrating her father's birthday.

Daddy had not wanted to celebrate. He had not really wanted _anything_ for a long time, not since _the accident_, which was how everyone referred to the terrible day when Daddy's car had crashed into a tree, barely a few hours into what had then been the new year. He had been gone for many weeks, away at the hospital where they were not allowed to visit him, and Mommy had not come back at all.

Now Daddy never smiled or joked like he used to, and Mommy's place had been occupied by Aunt Dorothy, who had come to stay with them after_ the accident,_ supposedly to look after them until Daddy got better, and had never left again.

Jess doubted that Aunt Dorothy would _ever_ leave, just as she doubted that Daddy would ever get really well.

It had not been quite as bad when Mick still wrote.

His letters had arrived, regular as clockwork, containing funny things he had experienced at work – he was a fisherman now – and little adventurous stories he made up for her and Janie, and he had always sent them a lot of kisses, a long row of Xes at the end of each letter. They had always looked forward to finding one of them on the hall table when they came home from school. Reading and answering it had always cheered them up no end.

But then, suddenly his letters had stopped coming.

When she asked why that was, Aunt Dorothy told her brusquely Mick was so occupied with other things that he had lost interest in them. After all, what should a grown-up _fisherman_ (Jess hated how Aunt Dorothy spat out the word, like it was something disgusting) want with two little spoiled brats who were, after all, only his _half-_sisters?

Jess had been at a time devastated and disbelieving. Mick would never have lost interest in her and Janie, that much was certain, even if she couldn't figure out why he didn't write any more then.

One day, shortly before Christmas, she had seen something white and rectangular peeking out of Aunt Dorothy's apron pocket and nudged Janie excitedly, pointing her finger, which earned her a sharp reprimand from her aunt. Her question who had sent the letter went more or less unanswered. Aunt Dorothy only informed her icily that her mail was none of the girls' business.

Later the same day, Jess found the smouldering remains of an envelope in the fireplace. A few scraps of words were still recognizable – it was bits of their address and, above that, "To Miss J…" neatly printed in blue ink, in the handwriting she probably knew the best of all.

With an enraged yelp, she grabbed the charred paper, hoping she could save it, but most of it crumbled to sooty flakes under her fingers.

Bitter tears sprang to her eyes, and she angrily kicked the fire screen, which toppled over with a tremendous clatter. Instead of picking it up like a good girl would have done, she kicked it again and sent it flying into the next armchair with another great crash.

Of course, Aunt Dorothy appeared within seconds, her face a mask of ill-boding disapproval. "What do you think you are _doing_, Jessica?" she screamed.

Before she could launch into the usual dressing-down, Jess shouted at the top of her lungs, "You _lied!_ You told us Mick stopped writing, but it was all lies! You burned his letters, and you lied to us! You're just a mean old scarecrow, and I _hate_ you!"

Aunt Dorothy seemed barely able to restrain herself when she hissed through clenched teeth, "Calm yourself, Jessica. Aren't you ashamed to behave like that? Just think what your mother would say!"

"Mommy's _dead! _She can't say anything any more!" Jess yelled, her face red with rage, tears still flowing.

Aunt Dorothy flinched and gasped and said, quite shocked, "Jessica, please! I won't have this kind of talk, especially not with your poor father still so unwell. You know you mustn't upset him, don't you?"

"What's Daddy got to do with it? Why do we always have to be careful about him? Why can't _he_ be the one to tell us what to do? Why do we have always have to listen to _you? _You're not my mother! You can't make me do anything, and I don't have to stick to all your - stupid - rules!" She banged both fists into one of the armchairs to give additional emphasis to her last words.

Her aunt cuffed her round the ear with her bony knuckles and lectured her once more about where she and Janie would have ended up after the accident, with their mother gone and their father so poorly that it was all but clear if he was going to pull through.

Jess listened with narrowed eyes, panting, and, when the tirade was finished, burst out, "I wish he hadn't pulled through! I wish he was dead, and so were you, for then we could go and live with Mick and Grandma Mary and Grandpa John! We could finally be _happy_ again!"

Aunt Dorothy slapped her hard across the cheek.

Jess struck back at her without thinking and hardly noticed her aunt whipping a measuring tape out of her apron pocket and swinging back her arm in a threatening arc.

"_Leave_ her, Dorothy!" a voice said from the door, Daddy's voice, firmer than Jess had ever heard it since the accident.

Aunt Dorothy gave him a long, hard, hateful stare before she scornfully coiled up the tape again and stalked away with a venomous glance at Jess, who had fled into her father's arms and was sobbing at his chest.

He held her and stroked her hair, but his grip was limp and his movements weak and strained, and he didn't even ask what the confrontation had been all about.

Jess didn't feel a lot better afterwards, not the way his, or Mommy's, hugs used to make her feel better before _it _had happened.

She knew she'd be in permanent disgrace with Aunt Dorothy now, but she didn't care. Nor did she care when she got sent to bed without dinner. She hadn't been hungry anyway.

In fact, she was glad to be alone in her and Janie's bedroom while the others were eating their dinner downstairs. Now that she knew Mick had not forgotten about her or lost his interest, she would simply write to him secretly.

She wasn't quite sure yet how she'd manage to get his answers – maybe she could ask him to send them to her friend Maggie's address, or to Ella Dawson, who had Mommy's best friend and the kind of woman she'd have loved to have for an aunt – but she wanted to pour her heart out to him on the spot, let him know why he had not had any letters from her and Janie in a while and tell him how awful it was with Aunt Dorothy around.

She wrote and wrote, covered page after page in her loopy longhand and finally stuffed it all into a big envelope, misspelled words and ink blots and all. She addressed it in her most beautiful handwriting and went to bed with a little smile on her lips.

All she had to do tomorrow was find a stamp, which would be fairly easy because she knew that there were some in the little box on top of the small writing desk in the living-room, and drop by the post office after school to send the letter on its way.

Penny Slater at the post office hardly looked up from the half-finished baby shoe she was knitting when Jess handed her the letter.

She longed to tell her this was very important but didn't dare to. Instead, she went home, trying to hide her excitement.

How long would it be until she received an answer? Or would he be mad at her because he hadn't had word of her for ages and not reply at all?

The next day, there was a fat envelope beside her dinner plate.

Her heart began to pound.

He could not have written _that_ fast, could he? And he shouldn't have written her _here._

With a very unpleasant twinge in her tummy, she realized it was her own letter.

"Young lady, would you care to explain this to me?"

Aunt Dorothy had approached unnoticed, sneaking up on Jess inaudibly as was her habit, and snatched the envelope off the table, holding it up, out of Jess's reach.

"What … how did you …", Jess stammered.

"I had the nastiest surprise when I went to the post office this morning! Mrs. Slater gave this to me and said I'd surely be happy to pay the additional postage …"

"But I put a stamp on it!" Jess interjected indignantly.

"It wasn't enough, you foolish thing!" her aunt said, making it sound as if Jess was a complete idiot. "And I thought I had made it quite clear that I do not wish any correspondence going on between you and … and that … boy. You should have seen the looks Mrs. Slater and the other customers gave me when I said I wouldn't because it had all been a misunderstanding."

"You didn't say a word", Jess exclaimed. "You only burned his letters!"

"That should have told you enough, young lady. Now what was so important that you had to write to him in secret?"

"I … I just … just wanted to tell him how much we're missing him, and that we love him. Nothing … nothing … bad."

"This must be quite the declaration of love, judging from the weight", Aunt Dorothy said acidly. "And if it's nothing bad, I'm sure you will not mind if I read it." She slipped a finger under the flap and began to pry it loose.

"No! Please!"

But Jess knew she was protesting in vain.

"_I wish Janie and me could come to live with you, so we could at least have some fun again",_ Aunt Dorothy quoted, her eyes bulging. _"We always have to be so frightfully good. It's nothing but 'don't run, don't talk back, don't laugh too loud'. It's always 'Behave like a lady'. I don't want to be a lady. Ladies are frightfully boring." _She lowered the letter for a moment, piercing Jess with look sharper than the pointiest needle. "So that is all the regard you have for the good education you are getting?"

Jess said nothing, just stared back at her defiantly, arms folded over her chest, and Aunt Dorothy scanned the rest of the letter and froze.

"This is incredible!" she shrieked. "I say, that boy is having a very bad influence on you! _'Please write to Maggie Mathison's address if you want to reply. Aunt Dorothy burned the last letter you sent. You really were right when you said she's a wicked old witch.'" _She tossed the letter onto the table and shook her head in frustration. "Jessica, what on earth is wrong with you? Haven't you got any love or loyalty for your family? Haven't you got any _respect_? I have no idea what to do with you except whip the living daylights out of you, and if I'm sparing you that, it's only because your father forbids it. Go away! Go, get out of my eyes. I don't want to see you anywhere down here until you are ready to apologize. And if you ever try anything like this again, it might well be the orphanage for you. They should know how to deal with the likes of you there."

Jess marched up the stairs without a word, but on the first landing, she turned and shouted down in her best Maine-tinged vernacular, "Daddy ain't never gonna let you send me away!", before she ran on up, muttering sullenly, "Stupid old witch, that's what you are!"

She banged the bedroom door shut behind her, took both of her shoes off and threw them against the wardrobe door, then hurled herself across the bed, half waiting for furious footsteps following her, but no one came.

For the next weeks, icy silence was all she got from Aunt Dorothy unless speaking couldn't be avoided.

Jess didn't mind that too much, but what angered her terribly was how Dorothy kept her stamps and small change locked away and how she always made sure to fetch the mail right after it was delivered so that the girls wouldn't get their hands on any undesired letters from Maine.

And then there was the terrible night when she woke up frightfully thirsty and sneaked downstairs for a glass of water.

As she walked past Daddy's study on her way back from the kitchen, she heard voices from behind the closed door, low but kind of urgent, speaking rapidly.

Something made her stop and listen, straining her ears to distinguish the words they were saying.

Something told her this was serious.

Serious and important.

"… not only those letters, but have you seen any of those _stories_ he sent them? Highly unsuitable for girls their age, Daniel, about pirates and fights and dreadful things like that. Smoking and drinking even!"

Jess remained rooted to the spot, listening.

Aunt Dorothy was talking about Mick!

"And you cannot imagine the _words_ he was using. Vulgar, coarse language. Not at all what we would want them to use. Well, I have to say I wouldn't have expected anything else."

There was an ominous little pause, and Jess could clearly picture the sour expression of distaste on her aunt's gaunt face, the way she looked down her long nose and pursed her lips in that wrinkly fashion that made her mouth looked even more pinched.

"All that would just have served to make the girls rebellious and insubordinate, and we don't want that, do we? Especially Jessica is fractious enough as it is. No, Daniel, this is the right decision to make, believe me."

"I don't need to be persuaded, Dorothy. God knows I want to get away from all those memories. I just can't bear being here without her. But the girls …"

"The girls are children still, Daniel. They will do as they are told, and they will adapt faster than you think. Children forget so easily. This time next year, they will hardly remember ever having lived here."

What was she talking about?

Jess's heart had jumped into her throat and sat there, thumping, a fat throbbing clump that made it impossible to swallow and difficult to breathe.

Were they going away from here, from home? For good?

She couldn't move anything but her right hand, which bunched up the bottom of her nightshirt and twisted it here and there.

She didn't hear another word either of them said. She just stood and stared and wanted to cry but couldn't.

After _she_ had made them abandon all contact with Mick, _she_ was now going to make them abandon their home; _she_ had poisoned Daddy's mind to make him think it was all for the better even though he must have known it wasn't.

Jess wouldn't have thought she could hate her even more than she had before, but yes, she could.

She hated her so much, even if Miss Kristensen, her Sunday school teacher, said it was a very bad sin to hate any person. But obviously Miss Kristensen had no idea what people could be like.

A noise from inside the study startled Jess out of her stupor, and she hurried away after all. If she got caught eavesdropping, Aunt Dorothy might yet make good on her promise to whip the living daylights out of her.

When Daddy broke the news to her and Janie a few days later, Jess kept her mouth shut and forced all the ranting and raging that wanted to break out of her to stay inside. She didn't cry either, that was for babies - the silent tears that sometimes seeped into her pillow at night didn't count because nobody could see them.

But inside her, there was a small spot like a hard black marble, right beside her heart, where the utter resentment she felt had taken up residence and made her feel angry and hurt all the time.

Sometimes, it even made her do bad things, like when she deliberately stepped on Aunt Dorothy's good yellow silk blouse with her dirty boots, ripping the cuff and staining the fabric irreparably, or hid Aunt Dorothy's favourite brooch, an ugly silver thing with a cluster of blood-red stones in the middle, at the very back of the bottom drawer in her aunt's bedroom.

Now it was Jess who didn't to speak to her father and her aunt unless she couldn't help it. She didn't even speak a lot to Janie, who was weepy and whiny all the time and not much fun to be with.

They had been living in Virginia for more than half a year now, and Jess couldn't say anything had improved.

Daddy was still sad and depressed and came home exhausted at night, even if his new job at the hospital was supposed to be a lot less stressful than having his own practice.

Aunt Dorothy was still stern and implacable and ruled the household with an iron hand.

Janie still cried at the slightest insult or injury, and Jess herself felt painfully robbed of everything she had ever loved. She missed her old hometown, she missed their old house, she missed her old friends, and most of all, she missed Mick.

What hurt her almost as badly was to see how Janie gradually began to believe that Mick indeed had forgotten about them, that he had stopped thinking of them, that he didn't care any longer.

Jess defiantly put the photo of the three of them, all dressed in their Sunday best and laughing, up on her nightstand, amazed that Aunt Dorothy never tried to take it away. She probably thought that if she allowed Jess to keep the picture of her brother, she would refrain from trying to get in touch with him.

Nevertheless Aunt Dorothy maintained her close watch on stamps and stationery and the mail.

Nevertheless Jess kept devising adventurous plans how she might succeed after all.

Today, while they were trying to celebrate Daddy's birthday with a bunch of neighbours and new acquaintances, pretending they were such a happy little family although everybody knew they weren't, she had missed Mick worse than ever before.

She hadn't been able to get a single piece of birthday cake down and hadn't even touched the glass of fresh lemonade beside her plate. And then, Mrs. Whitney, the mother of her new school friend Kathleen, had made some well-meaning remark about how nice it was that she and Janie seemed to get along so fine.

"I always tell Kathleen to take a leaf out of your book. She's always complaining about Ruth and Doris and keeps saying she'd trade both of them in for a big brother any time. Wouldn't you, Kathy?" She had nudged her daughter playfully and added, "I'm sure Jess would agree with me that big brothers are quite overrated."

Jess had blinked and nodded dutifully and then excused herself quickly, hurrying inside through the screen door so nobody would see her cry.

As she stepped into the cool interior of the house, one of the ideas she had turned over again and again in her mind came rushing back at her powerfully.

She didn't feel like crying any more.

Yes, she would call Aunt Ella back home in Missouri and tell her how unhappy she was and how she missed Mick and wasn't allowed to write to him, or to anyone. She would ask her to act as a go-between. She surely wouldn't mind getting letters from Mick and passing them on to Jess and vice versa.

How she should manage to keep it all from Aunt Dorothy in the long run, Jess didn't know, but Aunt Ella usually had a clever solution for any kind of problem. She had always liked Mick well and would certainly come up with something. Or Joanne would, Aunt Ella's pretty, chestnut-haired daughter who had babysat her and Janie countless times.

Jess listened for steps or voices again, and when she was sure that she was still alone inside the house, she took a deep breath and pushed open the door to her father's study, which Aunt Dorothy had declared strictly off limits. It was dusky inside, the maroon curtains drawn against the summer heat.

Without switching on the light, she climbed into the big brown swivel chair whose leather felt cold under her bare legs and, kneeling in the chair so she could reach it, picked up the receiver of the telephone that sat in one corner of the heavy desk.

She was just about to answer the operator's routine questions, her heart hammering wildly, when the door was flung open and the feared, familiar figure towered in the doorway, an ominous outline dark and dreadful against the sunlit corridor.


	3. Chapter 3

Aunt Dorothy had taken a thin cane to Jess's backside after all when the birthday guests had left.

Jess had hardly been able to sit for days, and not even Daddy had shown much sympathy. He had only stroked her back weakly when she tried to tell him what had happened and why and told her to leave the matter alone, toeing Aunt Dorothy's party line of how Mick obviously didn't have any wish to stay in touch.

Jess knew it was all nonsense, but she had no way of proving it, and she put a lid on her sorrow and locked it away inside, not even talking much to Janie about Mick any more. Her sister seemed to forget that they had once had an older brother; meanwhile, he didn't appear to be much more than a face in a photograph to her.

She held back her feelings until her twelfth birthday came.

On that day, she decided she was not a child any more, and she did two things that made her feel wonderfully free.

First, she took the huge scissors Aunt Dorothy used for her sewing and cut off the long hazel braids she still made her wear. The result looked a little frayed and somewhat lopsided, but she relished the way her hair fell freely around her face and tickled her neck at the back, and she loved how the face in the mirror appeared older and almost grown-up.

Daddy's eyes grew big and wide when she showed up at the dinner table with her new haircut, and Aunt Dorothy almost had a heart attack, pressing a hand to her bosom in shock and anger. Janie only said, "You're looking pretty stupid", and kept shovelling mashed potatoes and gravy into her mouth.

And then, after a dinner conducted in uneasy silence broken by her father's awkward attempts at conversation, she went into her bedroom, brought out the envelope and stamp she had bought with her own money earlier that day, and wrote to Mick.

It wasn't the lengthy kind of epistle she had been trying to send him when Aunt Dorothy caught her in the act. She was cleverer than that now.

She just wrote one page, trying to explain why she had been silent for so long, and asked him to reply as quickly as he could, promising she would tell him a lot more about her and Janie's life next time.

As a return address, she used that of her best friend and classmate Muriel Shirkie, who thought it was quite exciting to help Jess find her brother and had sworn on her own beloved brother's life never to breathe a word to anyone.

For the next fortnight, she lived in a feverish hope she could hardly hide. Not even the fact that Aunt Dorothy chopped off her hair brutally below the ears as a belated punishment, which made her look really stupid, bothered her as badly as it would normally have.

She had finally written to Mick, and she would finally get her first letter from him in over two years.

She pictured his firm handwriting in blue ink on a simple white envelope, saw herself caressing the paper before she very carefully opened the letter with a pen knife, imagined the wonderful excitement of the moment she'd pull out the folded paper, then wait some more to prolong the pleasant, prickling anticipation before she'd eventually begin to read.

When Muriel hurried toward her one morning before school and produced a letter from her bag, Jess felt all faint and dizzy.

It had worked!

She slipped the envelope into her own bag without any closer look. She wanted to celebrate the moment she opened it, all by herself in the little park she passed through on her way home. What a stroke of luck that Janie's class were on a day trip to the museum today and she'd get to walk home alone!

Excitement fluttered in her stomach like a horde of butterflies gone wild, and she certainly didn't learn a lot at school that day.

Her hands were trembling when she sat down on the sun-warmed bench and brought out the letter.

Her brow knitted for a second when she looked at the address. The writing seemed too small, with too many flourishes, didn't it?

With a sinking feeling, she cast all her plans of making a little ceremony out of opening the letter and simply ripped at the paper, eager to soak up her brother's words.

But the letter didn't comprise more than a few lines, and the tone was polite but distant.

The bottom dropped out of Jess's world.

It wasn't from her brother, that much was clear not only from the handwriting but also from the first line on which read "Dear Jessica". Mick had never, ever called her that.

It was a Mrs. Charles Benton who was writing to her, saying she was very sorry but Mr. Carpenter didn't live in Seaview Lane any more. He had sold the house to Mrs. Benton's husband after Mr. and Mrs. Walsh had sadly passed away within less than a year of each other, and she regretted to say that she did not have any information about Mr. Carpenter's current whereabouts.

Jess was so blindsided by what she read that it took her several seconds to realize who this Mr. and Mrs. Walsh were who had died.

Her grandparents. Grandma Mary and Grandpa John. Two vague figures in her mind, surrounded by an aura of loving kindness and the memories of carefree childhood days.

She had not thought of them much recently, but it was a big shock to find so abruptly that they were both gone.

As was Mick, apparently.

Gone in a different way but just as unattainable.

Jess scrunched the letter into a ball, threw it into the scrubs and crumpled into a heap of misery on the bench, burying her face in her hands, wanting the world to go away and the ground to rise up and cover her.

She cried and cried, until she felt she had no tears left, and then she cried some more before she shuffled home, hopelessly defeated.

She told Aunt Dorothy she wasn't feeling well and went straight to bed, where she wished she could stay for the rest of her life.

But of course she couldn't.

She couldn't even really tell anyone what had happened; she confided parts of the story to Muriel who hugged and held her as she cried once more but then, no five minutes later, happily chattered about the beautiful dress she was going to get for her big sister's wedding and how Logan Macarthur had tried to kiss her behind her grandma's outhouse.

Jess was alone with her grief and bitter self-reproach.

She shouldn't have given up so quickly.

She should have defied Aunt Dorothy no matter what; she should have written to Maine much earlier, before they all were gone.

For the first time in her life, Jess truly felt the full impact of the words "too late".

* * *

For years, she stubbornly held on to the hope that one day a miracle would happen and she would run into Mick in the street or that she would look up from whatever she was doing to find him standing there unexpectedly, with his lovely grin and his sparkling eyes, but the older she got, the less her heart was actually in it.

Once, at seventeen, she spent a week with her college friend's family in St. Louis, and she gathered her courage together and took the train to the little town that was her birthplace.

The white church near the station where they used to go on Sundays appeared smaller to her grown-up eyes, but other than that, not too much had changed.

The street where she had spent the first years of her life still looked pretty much the same, except that the big elm tree on the corner had been cut down and a new house stood where there had been a patch of grass and weeds between the Lanskys' and the Berensons'.

She hovered outside their former home and couldn't bring herself to ring the doorbell. A funny little feeling tugged at her stomach when she saw a red tricycle by the door and some other toys strewn across the lawn. Who were those kids? Were they happy there, like she and Janie had been? Did they have a big brother who played and joked with them?

Before she could get all too morose, a breezy voice had called out to her, and through a thin veil of sudden tears, she recognized Ella Dawson, her hair gone grey and her body grown thick around the middle, but very much the same otherwise.

"Aunt Ella!" she cried and flung herself at her.

"Jess! Is that really you? I can't believe it!" Ella kissed her on both cheeks. "I thought I'd never see either of you cuties again, not after you moved away and your aunt made it clear that your father didn't wish to keep up any contact with this place. She said it was all too painful for him with your mom gone and that he wanted to make a new start. It had me wondering a little, it didn't seem to be like Dan, but then, grief does that to some people." She shook her head vehemently and went on, "Whatever. Do come in! What brings you here? Come on, sit down, have some coffee."

They made pleasant small talk for a while and reminisced about days long gone, and Jess felt a bittersweet kind of happiness spreading warmly through her.

Then Ella asked, "How's Mick doing these days? He was always such a dear, especially with the two of you."

Jess swallowed hard and, after a small pause, told her that she had not seen him in ten years nor had any word from him.

"Oh my goodness. Don't tell me he never had that address in the first place."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, he phoned me once, about half a year after you'd left, and asked whether I had your new address. I … I thought he'd just misplaced the address or failed to note the house number or something. I felt like such a clod when I had to tell him no, you hadn't left any address or phone number because Dorothy said Dan wouldn't be able to cope with well-meaning calls and letters from old friends and neighbours. I didn't think …"

Jess's face went white, and she didn't hear what Ella was saying any more.

_That wicked old witch._

She left for St. Louis not much later, stricken and furious, but also in a way relieved to have her suspicion confirmed that it had not been Mick's fault that they had lost touch, that he in fact had tried to find them, just as she had always believed he would.

It wouldn't help her find him, though.

She told herself she'd best bury her dreams of ever seeing him again, go on with her life and accept that her brother had become one of those shadows from the past like her mother and her grandparents and some friends that had come and gone.

But even as she did go on with her life, the occasional tear fell onto the glass that enshrined the photograph on her nightstand, and every so often, she stroked the curved back of the little wooden seahorse, carved from a bit of driftwood by her brother's skilful hands, that sat on her desk right next to the jar where she kept her pencils.


	4. Chapter 4

_September 1953_

It was Friday again, but Jess wasn't in too good a mood.

Oliver was on the night shift and she herself would have to work the next day. No dinner at Maddie's, no cinema, no stolen hours of tenderness.

As she walked home on her own, she remembered, a little wistfully, the night in Oliver and Patrick's kitchen a week ago and the hope it had brought back.

She hadn't had any news from Patrick since then.

Oliver had reassured her Patrick had not forgotten about his promise and that it might take his father some time to find out anything useful, but Jess felt it was another dead end.

She should have known better than getting her hopes up at all.

She should have known she'd only be disappointed once more in the end.

She went home and sullenly greeted Ethel, her talkative landlady, when she bumped into her at the door, brushing past her quickly with an apologetic, "Sorry, Ethel, but I really need a shower now, it's been an awful day."

"Sure, honey. Just don't use up all the hot water, will you? Jerry's not home yet from his building site and he'll be awfully grubby for all I know."

Jess nodded obediently and hurried up the stairs.

She had just slipped on her bathrobe and wrapped a towel turban-like around her damp hair when there was a knock on the door and Ethel chirruped, "I hate to disturb you in there, but I've got someone on the phone for you. He says it's urgent."

Jess sighed. This _had_ better be urgent, she thought, wondering who it could be.

_He? _

There weren't a lot of men who had her number. Oliver was at work, so it was certainly not him, and her father was even less likely. He never phoned except for her birthday, sometimes.

Jim, perhaps, Janie's husband? Had something happened to her sister, or one of the kids?

Her heart was beating a little faster than usual when she picked up the receiver downstairs.

"Hi, Jess, it's Patrick. I've finally heard back from Dad."

She clutched the receiver a little harder and hardly dared to breathe.

"It took him a while, but he's found something about one … wait …" Paper rustled before Patrick read out, "Michael John Henry Carpenter, born on October 29th, 1913, in Harpswell, Maine."

"That's him", she whispered.

She closed her eyes and bit her lip as she waited for Patrick to go on, bracing herself for the ultimate bad news.

"I'm afraid Dad has no idea where he is now, but he survived the war, even though he was wounded in July 1945 and shipped out to a hospital in Brisbane. He remained there, or at least out of combat, for the rest of the war. Received a Purple Heart and was discharged honourably at his own request in February 1946. He apparently stayed in Australia after that. Dad gave me an address, too, although I'm not sure if he'll be living there any more. It was c/o one Mrs. Eleanor Cunningham, probably some kind of lodging house. You may yet want to give it a try. She might at least know where he went on to from there."

Patrick paused, then asked, "Jess? You still there?"

"Yes", she breathed. She mechanically jotted down the address Patrick dictated her, thanked him and hung up quickly.

She was glad that Ethel had disappeared and didn't see her staggering back into her room, her hand closed around a slip of paper with a scribbled address, the other pressed to her mouth to stifle the laughs and the sobs that wanted out.

She dropped into the armchair by the window and let the tears flow freely.

He had survived. He was alive.

Well, if she was honest, that he had been alive by early 1946 didn't prove anything – a lot could have happened in eight years, especially considering that he must have been seriously wounded if they had evacuated him to Australia – but she had a trace of him!

She was closer to finding Mick, or at least to finding out what had become of him, than she had ever been since Aunt Dorothy had snatched away her letter more than half a life ago.

Once her tears had ebbed away, she got out a sheet of her nicest stationery and, for the first time in twenty years, began to write a letter to her brother.

This time, nobody was going to keep her from sending it.


End file.
